^^^Deb, I remember your post about taking your dad and your lawyer to the MC Museum. That was very special. It's one of those things you'll look back on and think, "I'm sure glad I did that."

 

So true...thanks.

 

A good day for veterans stories. A couple of years ago, my sister had this old veteran in her inpatient Hospice facility. Apparently his wife had previously died and he did not have visitors. Seems he commented to one of the nurses that as a WW II flyer he was sorry never to have seen the Air Force Museum and WRAFB in Dayton, Ohio. I got a call from my sister about what we could do about it. She was set to provide a van and a driver for the 400 mile round trip. She wanted me to make sure there would be no problems for him at the location. Though I knew he would have no problems as a visitor there, I called ahead and told them of the situation and the request of this terminal veteran in a wheelchair. Well, these people at the museum inverted themselves and pledged he would be their VIP of the day. As I understand, they provided a flag, a large welcome placard in his name, AF memorabilia, and a guided tour of this massive facility. Fairly predictable, he did die within a matter of days thereafter. He surely was worth everybody's effort.

 

Very, very nice!!

 

I guess that it falls in line with the disproportionate number of people (something like 1.2 million, if I remember correctly) that claim that they attended the concert at Woodstock in 1969. I would not be surprised at all if some of the homeless pan handlers that one sees are claiming to be Veterans to pluck at people's heart strings to get to their wallets. That is one of the reasons that we support organizations like Purpleheart.org

Unfortunately, I could not verify the statistics in my earlier post at either Snopes or Truthorfiction.com

 

^^ The average age in tip-of-the-spear combat units was a good bit lower.

I might have thought someone would have commented on the fact that only 25% of those who served in Vietnam were draftees? Is that not a public misperception?

Today there are 10s of thousands in the volunteer military who have deployed 3-6 times to either Iraq or Afghanistan. That's a lot of stress.

 

John, great story. You seem to have lots of them.

 

^^ I make and keep notes. I don't want to forget.

I wanted to tell the story of my best friend, a 30 year veteran, who died last spring, and also Lance Corporal Chris Scott Folkes whose funeral we stumbled upon in 'South Carolina in Sep and who inexplicably also was one of my son's first patients in Afghanistan.

 

There is a strange parallel I draw between veterans and parents. Both put up with a lot of sh*t, but they have decided that their task, their service, is far more important than any pay they receive or accolades they may or may not get.

I've seen it manifest itself in vets who don't openly talk about their accomplishments--they seem to have decided that their service was for this country and its people, and that to talk about themselves personally would somehow diminish the reason why they served.

To me it's incredibly powerful, and it makes me even more thankful for them.

 

Amen.